http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/373634020

Beauty for ashes : with numerous illustrations

As Albion Bacon's autobiography opens, she is an artistically inclined mother of four in a middle-class neighborhood in Evansville, Indiana. When her two oldest children contracted scarlet fever, she turned first to their school and then to the slums in an attempt to find the source of their infection. As she tracked through the filthy alleys and climbed the dark tenement staircases, she became convinced that society's most pressing need was for better housing. Though slight and reticent, she applied her powers of stamina, organization and dedication to an ideal, in working to help the harassed and overworked inhabitants of the slums. She formulated a housing bill in 1909 and saw it defeated by the state legislature in 1911 but Passed in 1913. Bacon tells her story modestly and with wit and a sense of wonder at her role and success in these proceedings.

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